The Automatic Earth

Giuseppe Sanmartino The veiled Christ (Christo velato) 1753

Iran really wants to make a deal, and it will be a good one for the U.S.A. and those that are with us. But don’t the Dumocrats, and various seemingly unpatriotic Republicans, understand that it is MUCH tougher for me to properly do my job and negotiate, when political hacks keep… pic.twitter.com/aqE6G0UKGv

— Commentary Donald J Trump Truth Social Posts On X (@TrumpTruthOnX) June 1, 2026

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent delivered the perfect answer when Maria Bartiromo asked whether he is confident that the Iranians will keep their promises when it comes to a deal.

He ended with a warning to the regime.

BESSENT: “Well, what I have confidence in is that… pic.twitter.com/kVcZcXPFMU

— Overton (@overton_news) May 31, 2026

In the last two weeks I've taken out many bad Political "Leaders” and Pundits including Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Lightweight “Congressman” Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Brad Raffensperger of Georgia, REALLY DUMB Stephen Colbert of CBS, and others. My score, for two weeks,… pic.twitter.com/wgsGOjf0mj

— Commentary Donald J Trump Truth Social Posts On X (@TrumpTruthOnX) June 2, 2026

Iran can and will play this game forever if you let them.

• Iran Halts All Messages With US, Orders Opening Of New Fronts (ZH)

Merely last week, Western MSM press reports were touting the usual ‘close to a deal’ headlines, but this morning demonstrates how illusory such claims were and are, as Iranian state media now suggests a total halt in communications between the sides. Per state Tasnim, “Iran stops exchanging messages with the US in protest against Zionist crimes.” This as the IDF has sent ground forces deep into Lebanon, past the Litani River – in the deepest operation in decades. Tehran has insisted on linking up any US-Iran deal with a Israel-Lebanon peace. Tehran is now warning to “completely block the Strait of Hormuz, including the Bab al-Mandab Strait” – the latter with the cooperation of Yemen’s Houthis. All of this has direct impact on the US-Iran ceasefire:

IRAN’S STATE TV SAYS PROBABILITY OF CEASEFIRE BETWEEN IRAN AND U.S. ENDING IS HIGH IF ATTACKS ON LEBANON DO NOT STOP. Below is the full translated statement:

• “The determination of the Iranian armed forces and all axes of the resistance front to respond to Zionist crimes and open new fronts”.

• “Tasnim has obtained information indicating that, given the continuation of the Zionist regime’s crimes in Lebanon and considering that Lebanon was one of the preconditions for the ceasefire and that this ceasefire has now been violated on all fronts, including Lebanon, the Iranian negotiating team is stopping “talks and exchange of texts through a mediator”.”

• “The immediate cessation of the Zionist regime’s aggressive and brutal army operations in Gaza and Lebanon and the necessity of the regime’s complete withdrawal from the occupied areas in Lebanon have been emphasized by Iranian officials and negotiators, and there will be no talks until Iran and the resistance’s views on this matter are met”.

• “Also, the Resistance Front and Iran have set their agenda to completely block the Strait of Hormuz, and activate other fronts, including the Bab al-Mandab Strait, in order to punish the Zionists and their supporters”.

Oil jumps on the headline of halted talks… Futures slide…

Author and University of Chicago professor of the ‘realist’ school Robert Pape says the following on Monday published report: “We will run out of our cushion of oil inventories in July, whether it’s the middle or end of July,” he said. “And Iran knows that. So what Iran is doing is just stringing out the clock to get a better deal.” “What that tells me is they’re not interested in returning the price of oil back to where it was before the war,” he said. “I think what we need to understand is Iran’s goal is to continue instability, continue elevated price of the world’s oil because it gains from that.”

[..] CENTCOM: Intercepted Pair of Ballistic Missiles on Base On Monday morning US Central Command issued its official statement and explanation over the earlier tit-for-tat brief flare-up in fighting, which appears to have ended… “Last night at 11 p.m. ET, U.S. forces successfully intercepted two Iranian ballistic missiles targeting American forces based in Kuwait. These missiles were immediately defeated and no American personnel were harmed,” it said. “U.S. Central Command remains vigilant and will continue to protect our forces from Iranian aggression while supporting the ongoing ceasefire.”

Fresh Missiles on Kuwait
The extended US-Iran ceasefire is once again being severely tested, after Iran earlier in the daylight hours of Monday initiated fresh attacks on neighboring Kuwait and even released video showing footage of a ballistic missile launch. Kuwait in turn confirmed that has been intercepting inbound drone and missile fire. It hosts a major American base, which is again being targeted, though it’s unclear if anything has been hit. The IRGC subsequently identified that it targeted the US base in response to weekend US strikes on Iranian sites. According to a description of the released propaganda video:

The start of the video includes a close-up of what looks to be a sticker on the body of a missile depicting a bruised US president Donald Trump, on the phone asking for help, and overlaid on a “closed” Strait of Hormuz. The caption reads: “Until the last American soldier leaves the region.”

Iran's IRGC released footage showing the moment it launched missile attacks on what it claimed to be US airbases in Kuwait early Monday.

READ MORE: https://t.co/yRpPilUQ9S pic.twitter.com/f1Q2l5OnMu

— Rudaw English (@RudawEnglish) June 1, 2026

All sides, including the Iranians and Kuwaitis, are saying they have a right to defend themselves. The United States, for its part, has said that it bombed radar and drone sites in Iran in response to the Iranians having shot down a US drone over the weekend.

Trump doesn’t want to leave the US in an ongoing war in 2028/9.

• Trump Reportedly Ripped Netanyahu In Phone Call (ZH)

A bizarre and unexpected evening report from Axios says that President Trump ripped into Netanyahu during a phone call, cussing at him and essentially ‘steamrolled’ him – angry over breaking the Lebanon truce and demanding that Israel’s military not attack Beirut. Trump is said to have told Netanyahu “you’re fucking crazy’” while demanding Lebanon truce: “I’m saving your ass,” he also reportedly said. Iran early Monday said it halted talks with Washington because of Israel’s escalation in Lebanon. From the report:

One U.S. official said Trump told Netanyahu that following through on his threats to bomb the Lebanese capital would further isolate Israel around the world. Two of the sources said Trump claimed he’d helped keep Netanyahu out of jail — a reference to his support during Netanyahu’s corruption trial. Summarizing Trump’s remarks to Netanyahu, the U.S. official said: “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.” A second source briefed on the call said Trump was “pissed” and at one point yelled at Netanyahu: “What the fuck are you doing?” And more:

The second U.S. official claimed that, in reality, Trump had “steamrolled” Netanyahu on the call. “Bibi said, ‘OK, OK, just make sure everything is taken care of,'” according to the official. The level of detail in this call ‘leak’ is remarkable, suggesting it was an ‘official leak’ or intentional.

Fresh reports of fighting, amid shaky truce declaration: Sirens sound in the border community of Metula amid an apparent Hezbollah rocket attack from Lebanon. The rocket fire comes despite US President Donald Trump announcing that Hezbollah would stop carrying out attacks on Israel amid the ceasefire. Meanwhile, Iran claims it attacked a US container ship in the Sea of Oman (Fars News).

Lebanon Truce Affirmed
The Lebanese presidency has announced that Hezbollah agreed to a US proposal on the mutual cessation of attacks, which will expand to all Lebanese territory. Per a regional Arab correspondent: “As we emphasized, the Israeli attack on Lebanon was obstructing the reaching of the agreement. The mediators exerted great effort today, and after the American pressure and the Israeli retreat, the doors are now open to return the negotiations to their natural and positive course, and there is no longer much left.”

[..] Trump Suggests He is Forging Lebanon Ceasefire
Trump has announced the “shooting will stop” in Lebanon, after a flurry of phone calls, including with Netanyahu. This came shoon on the heels of Hezbollah signaling it is ready to agree to an immediate truce. Israel too has reportedly halted plans to begin new airstrikes on Beirut. The Lebanon crisis caused Tehran to earlier announced it is halting all contacts with the US. Will the US-Iran talks now be back on?

Trump to CNBC: ‘I don’t care’ if talks are over
Trump has shrugged off the apparent collapse of talks with Iran, after Tehran earlier said it has halted all communications with Washington over Israel’s expanded assault on Lebanon and Hezbollah. Trump has freshly told CNBC by phone, “I don’t care if they’re over, honestly.” “I really don’t care. I couldn’t care less,” he added, and indicated he was “going to ask” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “what’s going on with Lebanon.” This suggests Trump could pressure America’s ally to lower tensions.

Trump appears to be betting the US can ‘outlast’ the Islamic Republic, in terms of inflicting economic pain amid the growing global oil supply crisis due to the Hormuz Strait closure. On this, he reacted as follows: He also said he wasn’t worried about oil prices, which spiked following the report in Iranian state media that Tehran is vowing to “completely block” the Strait of Hormuz in addition to halting negotiations. “I think the oil will be dropping like a rock in the very near, you know, the very near distance,” Trump said.

President Trump tells NBC News that he’s not heard from Iran on reports they’re suspending talks, and on Iran, “I think we’ve been talking too much if you want to know the truth, going silent would be very good” We’ll keep the blockade in Hormuz. I think I can wait as long as they want. They’re losing a fortune.His comments to NBC: “It’s an appropriate thing to say, because they’re better negotiators than they are fighters,” he said in a brief phone call. “But they haven’t informed us of that.”

“It doesn’t mean we’re going to go and start dropping bombs all over there,” added Trump, who said Friday he would soon decide on a proposed deal to extend an ostensible ceasefire agreed to in early April. “We’ll keep the blockade.”

They want a peaceful transition away from the Castro clan.

• Cuba Could Be the Bite Trump Can’t Chew (Scott Ritter)

With much of the world’s attention on the still unresolved conflict between the US and Iran, the average consumer of news may be forgiven if they had forgotten that the US had, on January 3 of this year, launched a mini-invasion of Venezuela which resulted in the deaths of scores of persons, including a number of Cuban security personnel, and the capture of Venezuela’s President, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife. The US justified this action by noting that Maduro was, in its books, a fugitive from justice, having been previously indicted in a US Federal Court on narcotics trafficking charges.

The ease with which the US orchestrated the collapse of the Maduro regime and facilitated the transfer of power to a more than compliant vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, helped the administration of President Donald Trump project an aura of invincibility when it came to the implementation of what the President and his advisors were calling the ‘Donroe Doctrine’, their take on the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine which declared the Western Hemisphere to be the exclusive domain of the US.

Little more than a week later, on January 11, President Trump posted on his Truth Social account what amounted to a direct threat against the government of Cuba. “Cuba lived, for many years, on large amounts of OIL and MONEY from Venezuela,” the President wrote, stating that there had been a direct relationship between Venezuelan economic support to Cuba and Cuban security support to Venezuela. “Venezuela now has the United States of America, the most powerful military in the world (by far), to protect them, and protect them we will. THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA—ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!”

The president then set off a firestorm of speculation on American social media when, responding to a joking post that was made on X late the week prior stating that said, “Marco Rubio will be president of Cuba”, he wrote in response “sounds good to me!” Regime change in Cuba, it seemed, was on the cards.

A month later, President Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House, where the decision was made to attack Iran. The US and Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran on February 28, starting a 37-day campaign that ultimately saw the US and Israel fail to achieve any of their stated military and geopolitical objectives, and which left Iran in a position where it dictated the fate of the global economy by controlling the flow of oil and gas through the Strait of Hormuz.

An invasion of Cuba was no longer a top Trump administration policy.Almost overnight, this calculus changed. On May 21, Marco Rubio declared that Cuba was “one of the leading sponsors of terrorism in the entire region.” His comments came the same day that the US Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against former Cuban President Raul Castro. In one day, the Trump administration had reconstructed the pathway toward military action by the US against Cuba, mirroring the regime change justifications that had been cobbled together before the January 3 assault on Caracas that led to the capture of Nicolas Maduro and the collapse of his regime. These actions coincided with the arrival of a US carrier battlegroup off the shores of Cuba.

AI for the first time gets some counterweight. There’s never enough energy, and there’s never enough money.

• AI’s Coming Reality Check: When The Physics Finally Hits The Hype (IM)

In five years, we’ll all likely be chuckling and shaking our heads over AI. Because today, the tech feels free and limitless, doesn’t it? People are generating endless content: images, videos, memes, code snippets, social posts. Companies are bolting AI onto products by default, the way every Fortune 500 company suddenly discovered they were “sustainable” five years ago.There’s much deliberation on AI right now, and it splits into two main camps of thesis: The majority — those who will die on its hill of promise, convinced we’re months away from effective altruism, UBI, and sentient toasters.

And the minority — usually older, more experienced types — who don’t fully understand it, but look at numbers, remember the dot-com bust, and think this rhymes. We’ll leave that debate to the dinner parties. What interests us is something more boring. Physics. Because here’s the thing: AI isn’t free. Every token represents electricity. Something your average developer, product manager, user, or investor gives precisely zero thought to. Electricity means power plants, transmission lines, grid infrastructure — yes. It also means hot sheds; capital-intensive data centres and all the equipment, cooling systems, and real estate that go with them. Real things. Physical things.

We are surrounded by hype without consideration for the physics. bRight now, there’s a disconnect between the physical cost of this technology and the price users pay for it. That gap is being covered by Wall Street, venture capital, pension funds, hyperscaler balance sheets, and strategic spending on “growth” (a word which here means “losses we’ve chosen to rebrand”). The question is: what happens when that gap closes?

Scenario 1: The Industry Matures
No outright collapse, but financial discipline arrives. A novel concept in Silicon Valley. Low-value usage disappears first. “AI slop” dies because the people generating junk stop when it costs them actual money. Turns out nobody’s willing to pay real dollars to have a chatbot write their LinkedIn thought leadership posts. Tragic.

Serious users — those deriving profit or genuine productivity gains — remain. Growth slows but doesn’t stop. GPU upgrade cycles stretch from two years to three or five or seven. Valuations compress. The froth comes off but the infrastructure remains important. The boardroom shifts from “infinite logarithmic growth” to “focus only on what’s profitable.” Less bubble burst, more long, slow leak of disappointment. A bit like ESG.

Scenario 2: Energy as the Arbiter
Now overlay structurally higher energy prices. You know, the thing everyone was told wouldn’t matter because we’d all be running on solar and unicorn farts by now. If power becomes materially more expensive while capital markets tighten simultaneously, the economics get a lot harder.

Inference costs rise. Training LLMs gets hella more expensive. Shareholders start feeling like they’re holding the next NFT apes. Spending slows sharply. Many AI firms disappear. Hyperscalers pull back, maybe with taxpayer assistance (they are, after all, strategically important to those in power — funny how that works).

GPU cycles extend further. Seven-plus years between major upgrades becomes normal outside the top tier. Markets correct hard. Confidence takes a long time to rebuild. This is not the end of AI, but a reset. Users will fondly remember the “good old days” when it was free. When one could generate a movie scene and post on X about how they just ended a billion-dollar production company’s business model. Peak delusion makes for great content.

Scenario 3: AI Actually Delivers
There is also the upside case, though we admit it’s included here much like a “minority” conspicuously placed on a corporate board — a box-ticking exercise. In this scenario, AI meaningfully increases productivity across enterprises. It reduces costs durably. It embeds itself in everything from coding to logistics to research. The sentient toaster. Higher energy prices don’t kill demand because efficiency gains outweigh them. Hardware cycles remain short. Today’s valuations look justified in hindsight and Jensen Huang’s leather jacket gets its own wing at the Smithsonian.

For anyone familiar with us, you’ll know we think this is the most unlikely scenario. And yet it’s by far the consensus view. Which, if you’ve been paying attention to consensus views over the past decade (“inflation is transitory,” “ESG is the future,” “commercial real estate is fine”) should tell you something.] The gap between expectations and likely reality remains wide open. For Insider members, you’re familiar with the portfolio positioning and Nasdaq hedge.

What Really Matters
The key variable isn’t whether AI is impressive or useful (it is). The key variable is whether AI becomes a true profit engine or remains a subsidised cost centre dressed up in a hoodie and a TED talk.] If profitable and productivity-enhancing, current valuations are justified and the gravy train keeps chugging. If it remains mostly hype layered over weak economics, spending contracts, hardware cycles extend, and we could have an absolute humdinger of an economic “event.”

A ten-year stagnation would require something extreme: demand dropping significantly, hyperscalers becoming hyposcalers, capital markets wanting nothing to do with AI, and energy remaining expensive — all at once. Stranger things have happened. Just ask anyone who bought Peloton at $170. Almost 50 years of history show this eventually reverts to the mean… and the pendulum swings the other way.

There are known cases of AI models leading kids to suicide.

• Florida Becomes First State To Sue “Unsafe” OpenAI and Sam Altman s(ZH)

OpenAI no longer has to worry about being last in the AI IPO race and lagging ARRs when compared to Anthropic, not to mention a potential Supreme Court showdown against Elon Musk (pending appeal). Earlier today, Florida became the first state to file a lawsuit against OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, launching a new broadside in a growing rebellion against the alleged safety failings of artificial-intelligence chatbots. The lawsuit, filed Monday by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, claims OpenAI and Altman knowingly released an unsafe product and ignored warnings that it could harm users, the WSJ reported.

The 83-page suit alleges that OpenAI allowed ChatGPT to aid and abet mass shooters, encourage people to take their own lives, degrade users’ critical thinking skills and addict minors to a tool that feigns human compassion. “This litany of harms is driven by Defendants’ insatiable quest to win the AI arms race and amass large fortunes, despite knowing the danger of ChatGPT,” the suit said. According to the WSJ, lawmakers, legal authorities and public interest groups have increasingly been raising concerns about the personal and societal risks posed by AI, one of the fastest-growing consumer technologies in history.

The suit says it seeks to protect Floridians from OpenAI’s conduct and mitigate what it describes as a dangerous public nuisance. The suit also seeks to hold Altman personally liable for harm it says he has caused Floridians. Uthmeier opened a criminal investigation into OpenAI in April over the role its chatbot played in a mass shooting that killed two people at Florida State University last year. The suit opens with a screenshot of an OpenAI blog post that says ChatGPT was built with safety in mind. “Not so,” reads the suit’s text under the screenshot.

The suit alleges that OpenAI marketed ChatGPT as reliable despite its tendency to frequently generate dangerous misinformation, which is to be expected from a generative LLM trained on such toxic, liberal cesspools as Reddit and Wikipedia. “ChatGPT was designed by the Defendants to keep users hooked into conversations by any means, regardless of the truth, because it leads to more use of the chatbot, more training data for its improvement, and more market value for OpenAI,” the suit alleges.

The suit also claims the company exploits human compassion to collect user data and lacks necessary safeguards for minors. The suit describes a lack of safeguards in ChatGPT for teens and minors as reckless, and refers to instances of adolescent users being encouraged by AI to take their own lives. The suit says OpenAI created some parental controls, but does not require children’s accounts to be linked to a parent’s account.At FSU, the suspect turned to ChatGPT as a confidant and sounding board to plan the attack. He asked ChatGPT how many classmates he needed to kill to attract n ational media attention, and also how to use a gun. The chatbot promptly dispensed advice for his questions.

Until now ChatGPT has mostly faced litigation over copyright infringement claims. In November, OpenAI was ordered by a federal judge to turn over 20 million anonymized ChatGPT user logs to the NY Times and other newspapers suing the chat giant over its generative AI model. The newspapers had demanded the user logs to inspect how ChatGPT is used to create outputs they say infringe their copyrighted works. OpenAI pushed back, citing privacy concerns.

What do you mean, slow?

• The Slow Disappearance of Cash In Europe (Cláudia Ascensão Nunes)

Under the guise of fighting money laundering, the EU is making anonymous economic activity progressively harder…

Starting in July 2027, Europeans will no longer be allowed to pay businesses or professionals more than €10,000 in cash (roughly $11,500). Any transaction above €3,000 (just under $3,500) will require mandatory customer identification. This is another step toward political uniformity across Europe, stripping countries of autonomy and subtly pushing citizens toward the digital euro. This measure, part of the new Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (AMLR), applies directly to all Member States. Under the pretext of fighting money laundering, Brussels is imposing yet another form of forced harmonization that ignores the principle of subsidiarity: the idea that decisions should be made at the level closest to citizens and national governments.

What was once a matter regulated by individual countries is now becoming a uniform mandate from Brussels. This is a thinly disguised restriction not only on political freedom, but above all on economic freedom. Cash remains one of the last truly private means of exchange still available; unlike digital transactions, cash does not automatically create a centralized record accessible to banks or public authorities. The use of cash is often associated with the intention to hide illicit activity. Yet the ability to conduct private and discreet transactions is a natural extension of property rights and freedom of contract. Many law-abiding citizens prefer cash for entirely legitimate reasons, including protection against financial instability or potential capital controls.

From that date onward, professionals will be forced to turn every transaction above €3,000 into a bureaucratic process involving identity verification, data collection, and the risk of penalties. This is yet another regulatory imposition that raises the cost of doing business, similar to the introduction of VAT in Europe decades ago, which pushed many small businesses to close their doors or move into the informal economy because of increased bureaucracy and compliance costs. Small entrepreneurs, already pressured by high taxes and excessive red tape, will once again bear the heaviest burden. What were once simple voluntary exchanges will become sources of additional costs, delays, and state intrusion.

Once again, centralized authorities are creating regulatory complexity under the difficult-to-challenge justification of fighting crime, even though each country already has its own rules in this area. More liberal countries such as Germany will lose flexibility, since they previously had no general limit on cash payments. The uniformity imposed by Brussels ignores cultural differences, particularly differing levels of trust in institutions. In some countries, cash culture remains deeply rooted, and confidence in digital systems is significantly lower.

This measure represents a gradual erosion of individual autonomy. If using cash becomes increasingly inconvenient for merchants and consumers, people will naturally migrate toward digital payments. Over time, this initially convenient shift will make the introduction of the digital euro far easier. It is difficult to believe that it is mere coincidence that these restrictions are scheduled to take effect in July 2027 at roughly the same time the European Central Bank (ECB) plans to launch the first pilots of the digital euro. Cash becomes inconvenient and potentially risky at the same time digital money is presented as the practical alternative.

Once the principle is established that the state can limit private cash transactions, there is a strong tendency for those limits to become progressively stricter. European countries themselves demonstrated this pattern when they still controlled these rules nationally. Belgium, for example, steadily lowered its cash payment ceiling over the years to the current €3,000.

The most likely outcome is that the new European-wide limit of €10,000, which may seem relatively high today, will gradually be reduced further until using cash for most significant transactions becomes impractical. In reality, the vast majority of cash transactions are already well below this threshold. According to studies by the ECB, around 81 percent of all point-of-sale payments are below €25, and cash is predominantly used for small everyday purchases. This means that the €10,000 limit will mainly affect legitimate higher-value transactions, such as the payment of certain professional services that many citizens and small businesses still prefer to carry out in cash.

The digital euro, presented as a complement to cash, will arrive at a moment when cash has already been substantially weakened. Unlike cash, this system is traceable, programmable, and potentially subject to holding limits, expiration mechanisms, or usage restrictions.

China has already offered real-world examples. In several pilots of its digital yuan, authorities tested expiration dates on funds, meaning the money would lose its value if not spent by a certain date. This turns money from a reliable store of value into a tool that encourages spending according to government timelines. Such features demonstrate how programmable digital currencies can be used to control economic behavior, punish saving, and steer consumption in line with state priorities.

These are conditions fundamentally incompatible with the freedom that cash provides. This accelerated yet discreet path toward a fully digital monetary system opens the door to an unprecedented level of financial surveillance and control in European history. By overriding the principle of subsidiarity, it will affect almost the entire continent.

The road to total societal control passes through the restriction of economic freedom.

“The bloc is weakening itself through its economic and military policies, Andrej Babis told the Financial Times”

• EU Following Path of Roman Empire’s Decline – Czech PM (RT)

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis has compared the EU to the Roman Empire in its twilight years, arguing that Brussels is weakening the bloc through its economic, climate, and security policies. Babis returned to office in December after his ANO movement won 34.5% of the vote and 80 seats in the 200-member lower house of parliament. Since then, he has positioned himself as a leading advocate of national sovereignty, a reassessment of EU policies, and a more pragmatic approach to Europe’s economic and security challenges. In an interview published on Sunday, Babis accused Brussels of steering the bloc’s economy toward decline through what he called its aggressive decarbonization agenda.

“The EU is now probably on the same road as the end of the Roman empire,” he told the FT. The EU’s push to phase out fossil fuels has become increasingly divisive, with critics in Germany, Italy, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia arguing that climate targets, carbon pricing, and environmental rules are adding to energy costs and weakening industrial competitiveness as governments also face rising defense bills and the economic fallout from the Ukraine conflict. Babis also said Prague would probably miss NATO’s 2% of GDP defense-spending target this year, despite claiming it met it in 2025. He blamed the pressure partly on a deficit left by Petr Fiala’s previous pro-EU government.

The issue feeds into a broader EU debate over dependence on the US, which accounts for around 60% of NATO’s total military spending. President Donald Trump has warned that the US could scale back its role in European defense unless NATO countries significantly increase military spending. The economic pressures, security concerns, and reliance on external military protection underpin Babis’ comparison with ancient Rome.

The Roman Empire’s later centuries were marked by political instability, economic strain, and military overstretch. It became increasingly reliant on foreign troops while struggling to finance its defenses, as trade and economic activity declined and external pressures mounted. The Western Roman Empire formally collapsed in 476 AD when its last emperor was deposed. Political authority fragmented into successor kingdoms, and Europe entered centuries of decentralization and instability.

They squeeze out of Abrego Garcia as much as they can. The Dems havesome strange bedfellows.

• Dubious Opinion on Abrego Garcia, Bar Complaint Against Todd Blanche (Turley)

This week, a public interest group filed an ethics complaint against Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, citing the recent dismissal of a criminal indictment against Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. The ethics complaint is the latest example of the left’s self-perpetuating lawfare machine. Liberal courts and groups first prime allegations against conservatives, which are then eagerly picked up by media and advocacy groups. It is no accident that this hit job on Blanche called upon the New York courts and bar to deliver the coup de grâce.

The New York bar and courts have long been willing allies on lawfare, including abusive charges against President Donald Trump and bar charges against his allies. This case, however, is particularly illustrative of how this system feeds on itself. At base, the complaint focused on a dubious decision by District Court Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr., who dismissed the indictment against Abrego Garcia. The Clinton appointee found in his 32-page order that the prosecution was vindictive. However, Judge Crenshaw spent relatively little time actually addressing the evidence against Abrego Garcia, who was allegedly an associate of the vicious MS-13 gang in years of human trafficking.

Vindictive prosecution claims are notoriously difficult to prove. (I know because I have tried it as a criminal defense attorney). Under cases such as United States v. Goodwin (1982), you must show that the charges “could not be justified as a proper exercise of prosecutorial discretion.” In both cases of selective and vindictive prosecutions, the Supreme Court has recognized that, as the court explained in 1962, “the conscious exercise of some selectivity in enforcement is not in itself a federal constitutional violation.” Moreover, in United States v. Armstrong, a case involving alleged selective prosecution, Chief Justice Rehnquist stressed that there is a ‘’presumption of regularity” in criminal cases.

There was ample reason for Abrego Garcia to have been charged entirely separate from any retaliatory or vindictive purpose. According to his indictment, Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13 and allegedly conspired with six others to “transport and move aliens” illegally into and throughout the country starting in 2016. This included alleged smuggling into the country of known “MS-13 members and associates.” The government accused him of over 100 such trips in specially outfitted vehicles as well as transporting firearms and narcotics. One witness testified that he had to warn Abrego Garcia against abusing some of the female aliens because it was “bad for business.” (Garcia was also previously charged with spousal abuse).

Judge Crenshaw, however, focused on the decision-making after Abrego Garcia was brought back from a deportation to El Salvador. I was one of those who wrote that he had to be returned in light of prior court orders. However, there were obvious reasons why, after he was returned, prosecutors decided to proceed with charges for his alleged criminal conduct in the United States. Crenshaw’s decision simply works too hard to find a basis for dismissing the indictment and will now be appealed. In my view, it is likely to be reversed. However, in the interim, the same voices are being heard for the disbarment or punishment of Blanche in New York where a Trump association is treated as far more incriminating than an MS-13 association.

It is fair to note that the Trump Administration has undermined its own position in denouncing lawfare by pursuing past critics, including dubious prosecutions over seashell threats against James Comey. However, that does not have bearing on the merits of the claim against Blanche or the dismissal of the Abrego Garcia indictment. The rage in New York has certainly not ebbed. There are ample rage addicts to applaud such claims inside the Bar. However, there are indicators that lawfare no longer holds the same cachet it once did.

Take Rep. Dan Goldman, who is fast becoming the Marie Antoinette of New York politics. Goldman was elected a few years ago on his pledge to investigate all things Trump and is still running on a “let-them-eat-impeachments” platform. In the meantime, his opponent, Mamdani-endorsed housing advocate Brad Lander, is running on bread-and-butter issues. Lander is reportedly 20 points ahead in the polls.

There is still hope that the New York courts and bar will restore a degree of apolitical, objective integrity to their ranks. The odds are still much greater that Blanche will stay in the bar than that Abrego Garcia will stay in the country. However, it is telling to see which of the two is being cheered on by the left.

“A sane society cannot debate its way out of psychosis. It must diagnose the patient with lethal precision and restore the ancient boundary between the mad and the free.” —LHGrey on X

• Psychodrama (James Howard Kunstler)

When you watch video of the shenanigans at the Delaney Hall ICE building in Newark, NJ, you must suspect you’re seeing a hopped-up political vaudeville act. Freaky as the “protesters” may be — with their tatts and piercings, gummi bear hair color, rolls of blubber, perpetually hoisted cell phones, drums, whistles, and pitiful umbrellas — they are no less actors than Jacob Elordi and Sydney Sweeney out in Hollywood. The Delaney Hall mobbers are allegedly paid by someone or some entity. You’d think the authorities and the news media would be racing to find out who that is.

But, so far, no official announcements and, wouldn’t you know, The New York Times did not even report on doings over there in its Monday morning edition. Independent reporter Nick Sortor, undercover in Antifi garb, discovered their “craft services” tent adjacent to the action in the industrial wasteland where Delaney Hall stands next to the reeking Passaic River. The tent was full of riot gear, tactical supplies, snacks, energy drinks, hot meals (lasagna!) delivered on the hour, first aid supplies, and other “protester necessities,” as if the siege of Delaney Hall was a major Hollywood production shoot.

Anyway, after days of freaks and geeks playacting “oppression” at Delaney Hall, the New Jersey riot cops showed up, including the mounted cavalry, and stuffed several busloads with arrested “protesters,” many of them from out-of-state. Did they bother to interview the folks manning the craft services tent to inquire what organization was paying for all the merch? Isn’t it about time for whoever is signing those checks to get indicted for fomenting and abetting insurrection?

The Democratic Party is reduced to psychodrama, and the nature of psychodrama is that it’s about nothing — nothing real, at least. It’s all concocted sound-and-fury to give the (false) impression that some injustice is occurring. In the case of Delaney Hall, a holding facility for illegal border-jumpers awaiting deportation, the alleged injustice is “unsanitary conditions, inadequate food, poor medical care, and physical and psychological torture.” In reality, conditions there are arguably better than the average Motel 8. Many of the inmates are murderers and rapists, of course, the worst of the worst.

You might suppose that the objective of the melodrama at Delaney Hall was to create another martyr a la Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti out in Minneapolis this past winter. Those two unfortunate dupes were induced by the party script to FAFO, leading to their tragic and pointless deaths. Alas, the incidents failed to incite the sort of national uprising that the Lefty-left will not stop seeking.

And now summer is nearly here and (the old song goes) “the time is right for dancing in the streets.” Or, rather, fighting in the streets. The time is also right for the FBI and the DOJ to shut down the funny money supply line for it, and it’s hard to figure now how they might fail to do that. The Delaney Hall arrests give them a vast opportunity to debrief the players, find out exactly how these stunts are being organized.

Tell them to stay home and count the geraniums.

• Jill Biden’s Memoir Is Going to Tear the Democrats Apart (Margolis)

The Bidens want to restore Joe Biden’s legacy after his disastrous presidency and his Hindenburg-style campaign collapse, and phase one is Jill Biden’s forthcoming memoir. The next step will be Joe Biden’s inevitable presidential memoir, which is sure to have quite a few doozies in it, but for now, we have Jill’s, and if she thought her book would “set the record straight” and the Democrat Party would be thrilled, well, that’s not what’s happening at all. Instead, it’s setting the Democrat Party on fire — and the people most enraged are the ones who spent years covering for Joe Biden.

According to Axios, several former Biden aides, including some of the most loyal ones, are furious about the former first lady’s efforts to rewrite history. Jill’s book, by all accounts, does what the Bidens have always done: point the finger everywhere except at the mirror. “The throughline between her book and [Kamala] Harris’ is that they blame everyone but themselves for the loss,” one former aide said. And another put it even more bluntly. “It’s just so selfish. The Bidens preached selflessness and service above all — and every decision they’ve made since he decided to run for reelection has been about themselves.” Ouch, that’s quite the indictment. And it’s coming from people who worked for the man.

The central tension in all of this is the June 2024 CNN debate with President Donald Trump. That was the night America watched Joe Biden visibly struggle to complete a coherent thought on a national stage. In one night, the liberal media, which had spent years pretending that Joe Biden was as sharp as a tack, could no longer pretend everything was okay. As PJ Media previously reported, Jill Biden claimed she thought Joe was having a stroke and cleverly suggested that her husband had never acted like that before or since.

Even former Obama aide Tommy Vietor couldn’t ignore the contradiction: if Jill Biden genuinely feared her husband was having a medical emergency on live television, why did the campaign proceed with the post-debate schedule? Joe went to a rally. Then he went to a Waffle House. Nobody called a doctor. Nobody pumped the brakes. That’s not the sign of a campaign thinking that Joe was having a medical issue.

Co-host Jon Favreau said he was “triggered” by the book’s framing and didn’t hold back. He rejected the idea that Democratic voters would simply forgive and forget by 2028. Voters, he argued, resent “being f***ing lied to by Joe Biden, Jill Biden and their entire f***ing campaign.”And the lying wasn’t just about one bad debate night. It was about Biden’s overall condition, the campaign’s internal polling, and a years-long effort to gaslight anyone who raised concerns. Critics who expressed worry were dismissed as “bedwetters.” Now, Favreau says, Joe Biden is essentially confirming by his own admissions that “they were lying the whole time.”

Which, of course, is exactly what conservatives were saying all along. How about that? Writer Zaid Jilani argued that it is “an underrated factor in how distrusted Democrats are that they systematically lied about Biden’s condition and in some cases still are.” Favreau agreed. The 2024 Democratic National Committee autopsy never even addressed Biden’s age or declining health as factors in Kamala’s defeat, a glaring omission that made it clear the party had zero interest in conducting an honest reckoning and was instead engaged in another cover-up.

The Bidens are now planning additional book appearances and campaign stops ahead of the 2026 midterms. Bad timing for the Democrats? You bet. Obviously, some Democrats wish they would just go away. One former official summed up the sentiment with barely concealed exhaustion: “I just wish they would give some more time and space and let people move on. It all feels so disingenuous.” The left-wing media is freaking out about the Biden book tour for two reasons. First, it reminds voters of the great deception, and that’s not good for Democrats at all. Second, they were all part of the deception, too, and they would really rather move on than get called out on it.

Remember, 51 signatorees. All willingly lied. Can we take their pensions away?

• Ex-intel Official: Hunter Biden Laptop Letter Was Deception Operation (Turley)

A former senior intelligence community official under President Barack Obama reported concerns earlier this year that the Hunter Biden laptop letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials in 2020 bore characteristics “consistent with coordinated intelligence deception operations,” according to a memo the ex-official submitted to the intelligence community inspector general. The concerns have now been referred to the Justice Department, a remarkable turnabout for a letter that was used six years ago to censor factually based concerns about Biden family corruption.

The October 2020 open letter–released as voters were making final decisions about whether to reelect Trump or elect Democrat Joe Biden–was signed by ex-intelligence officials including former National Intelligence Director James Clapper, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and former CIA Director John Brennan. Thomas Kuhns, the former official who submitted the memo recently to the Intelligence Community Inspector General, was a Senior Intelligence Officer and former advisor to the Deputy Director of National Intelligence during the Obama administration.

Kuhns told the inspector general that most of his career in government centered on maintaining the Intelligence Community’s analytic and integrity standards. “This assessment is not a political statement. It is based on the research and analysis of testified behavior, language choices, omissions, coordination, and effects attributable to intelligence tradecraft,” Kuhns wrote in a memo to the ICIG hotline, which was obtained by Just the News. Pro-Biden advocates warned that the public reporting on the contents of Hunter Biden’s personal laptop bore the “hallmarks of a Russian information operation.”

Then-candidate Joe Biden used the letter to fend off public criticism about his son’s overseas business dealings, drug use, and alleged influence peddling “This analysis is grounded in my expertise applying analytic integrity standards and intelligence tradecraft to evaluate raw and finished intelligence assessments/judgements. Those standards provide a framework to identify politicization, bias, and analytic weaknesses, as well as to identify whether intelligence tradecraft itself has been misapplied or misused,” he continued.

“The dancing bots are a warning, not a toy.”

• Aww Look At The Cute Dancing Robot Police State Surveillance Dog…(MN)

Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot dogs are being deployed at designated World Cup venues in the US to perform perimeter security inspections, prompting concerns over the advance of surveillance tech.The company has stated that the machines “will be used to assist security personnel with investigating things like suspicious packages or other potentially hazardous materials.” These four-legged fiends are set to roam, and even dance (oh how cute) around AT&T Stadium in Dallas and other FIFA sites ahead of the 2026 tournament, sending live feeds back to human teams with their 360-degree cameras, thermal sensors, acoustic pickups, and AI anomaly detection.

These are the new Boston Dynamics Spot robots deployed in Dallas for the 2026 FIFA World Cup

They are being used for security at World Cup venues in the Dallas area

Their jobs include:

– Perimeter security inspections
– Assisting with suspicious packages or hazardous materials… pic.twitter.com/rLsl2wnFuA

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) May 30, 2026

“The robots do not have facial recognition capabilities,” a Boston Dynamics spokesperson told WFAA, insisting they spot unauthorized people in restricted zones without utilising facial scans for now, after a viral TikTok video made the claim. Hyundai, the South Korean owner of Boston Dynamics and major FIFA sponsor, added the bots “will support on-site security operations, helping contribute to a safer tournament environment.”But peel back the puppy-like head tilts and choreographed spins and you see the real rollout: tireless mechanical sentries normalizing constant surveillance on American soil. They look fun today at the soccer spectacle expecting half a million visitors.

Tomorrow the same platforms patrol streets, malls, and events nationwide, always watching, always recording. This isn’t some isolated gimmick. It’s fast becoming commonplace in cities such as Atlanta, where robot security dogs prowl apartment complexes and parking lots issuing verbal commands to citizens. Recent videos show residents greeting the units politely and complying instantly – only for the bot to still summon real police anyway. The voice responding through the speaker carries a clear foreign accent. Speculation is rife that the live operators controlling these machines and watching every feed sit thousands of miles away in India.

Another viral clip captured locals staring down the mechanical intruder with a classic line that perfectly summed it up. These aren’t fully autonomous terminators yet. Real people – often overseas – sit at consoles staring at your every move through the robot’s eyes and ears, deciding when to hit the siren or dial American cops on you. Your privacy, your neighborhood, your compliance all funneled through foreign call-center eyes. Data stored, analyzed, potentially shared who-knows-where. Ordinary citizens get lectured by a machine whose controller doesn’t even live in the country.

The same quadruped platform that dances cutely for World Cup selfies or patrols Atlanta lots is already being militarized abroad. Just weeks earlier, footage emerged of China unleashing machine-gun-toting robot wolves engineered with a shared “collective brain” that lets them hunt and coordinate in simulated street battles. These pack-hunting death machines storm positions, clear entire urban blocks in minutes, and spare human troops the risk while turning dissent or resistance into target practice. Non-military versions are even for sale to civilians. While American cities outsource low-level enforcement to remote foreign operators who record and report on citizens, China turns the same tech into lethal swarms ready for real conflict.

The cute dancing dog at the stadium today carries the same sensors and mobility as tomorrow’s enforcer. Denials about “no facial recognition” ring hollow when software upgrades and off-the-shelf AI can bolt it on. The hardware is already here. The willingness to expand its role grows every time the public shrugs and scrolls past another viral clip. While this tech supposedly keeps big events “safe,” everyday Americans already endure open-border chaos, rising crime in blue cities, and government agencies that treat citizens as the threat. Surely the real priority should be securing the actual border, deporting criminals, and backing law enforcement that answers to voters – not handing patrol duties to remote-operated spy dogs whose operators answer to foreign paychecks.

Once these machines become commonplace, backed by endless camera grids and AI flags, the slide into a permission-based society accelerates. Move along when the robot says so. Stay out of the restricted zone it defines. Don’t question the system streaming your life overseas. The dancing bots are a warning, not a toy. Freedom means rejecting the slow normalization of this dystopian show on American streets. Push back now, demand human accountability and constitutional limits, or watch the cute dancing routine quickly morph into a demand for compliance.

96.

• Happy Birthday, Clint Eastwood — and a Happy Retirement, Too (Stephen Green)

Clint Eastwood retired so quietly that I didn’t even notice until his birthday came around this weekend, and for the first time in my lifetime — almost my parents’ lifetimes for that matter — that there isn’t a Clint Eastwood movie in production. Well, maybe just one. But I’ll come back to that in a moment. The Hollywood legend turned 96 on Sunday, making him more than a third as old as the Republic itself. He was born in 1930, just as the Great Depression was really getting going. His first screen appearance was an uncredited role in 1955’s Revenge of the Creature, the quickie sequel The Creature From the Black Lagoon. Small parts on TV and movies followed, until his starring role as Rowdy Yates on the long-running TV western, Rawhide.

Movie stardom eluded Eastwood until he traveled to Italy to headline as Joe in Sergio Leone’s classic spaghetti western, A Fistful of Dollars. He quickly became one of the big screen’s biggest draws, but as the old Hollywood cliche goes, what he really wanted to do was direct. And produce. And continue those starring roles. Seriously, the man is a machine.His first directorial outing was 1971’s Play Misty for Me, which scarred the crap out of me when I saw it on TV as a kid and scarred me even more when I finally watched it again as an adult. That film allowed Eastwood his first public expression of his lifelong love for jazz, culminating in his 1988 Charlie Parker biopic, Bird.

He made no fewer than five Dirty Harry movies, but also blew the character apart by showing us what a rogue cop might look like in real life with the criminally underappreciated Tightrope in 1984. The man who helped reimagine westerns in the 1960s with Leone reimagined them again in 1992 with Unforgiven — and by then he was already in his 60s, with another 30-plus years of moviemaking ahead of him. In 2004, he finally won a belated second Best Director Oscar for Million Dollar Baby. For my money, Eastwood should have, or at least could have, also won for Play Misty, Bird, and Gran Torino. But he didn’t often make the kind of BIG IMPORTANT MOVIES that Academy members feel like they’re supposed to vote for.

Eastwood just made damn good movies, and his pictures typically came in on schedule and under budget. He rarely budgeted for big money or long shoots. That’s one reason that, despite directing 40-some movies and taking some serious chances along the way, he only made a handful that lost money. Did I mention he’s a machine? And while Eastwood might be done acting and directing, he still has one more upcoming producer credit on IMDB, a remake of his 1977 action classic, The Gauntlet— with Tom Cruise and Scarlett Johansson attached. But this is starting to sound like an obituary, when what I wanted to do was wish the man (not a machine, really) a happy birthday and a satisfying retirement.

So let’s talk about that for just a moment. Around the time of 2012’s Trouble With the Curve, I started joking that Eastwood — already 82 — would never retire. My prediction-disguised-as-a-joke was that he’d die on the set of some new movie, and would be working so hard that he wouldn’t notice until St. Peter cleared his throat at him. But Eastwood did quietly retire after 2024’s Juror #2, although I’m not sure his heart was really in it. The picture raised a tough moral question, without preaching and without any comforting answers. I still think about that flick sometimes, and can’t wait to go back to it.

With a solid cast — Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, Kiefer Sutherland, and J.K. Simmons — and a modest budget, Juror #2 was exactly the kind of taut, engrossing, and clever thriller Eastwood was known for directing, going all the way back to Misty. But Hollywood murdered Eastwood’s murder-trial flick. First, Warner Bros. spent maybe $18 on marketing. Me — a lifelong Eastwood fan — only heard of it by accident, and not until it had already ended its theatrical run. It had maybe a two-week theatrical run. On fewer than 50 screens.

Even though Juror #2 was considered good enough to cap off the 38th annual AFI Fest — the longest-running film festival in Los Angeles — that’s as much backing as Warner gave it before dumping it to rent on streaming. Even then, you had to squint like Clint to find it. Is that any way to treat one of Hollywood’s most storied names, who just made a $30 million picture with a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes?

Maybe it was belated payback for that Empty Chair bit Eastwood did for Mitt Romney at the 2012 Republican National Convention, I don’t know. I might hang it up after that, too, even if I did still have another picture or three left in me. So let me say this directly on his belated 96th birthday. Mr. Eastwood, if Warner’s poor treatment drove you into an early retirement — if “early” could be at all appropriate for a career as long as yours — then I’ll miss like hell the films you didn’t get to make. But there are an awful lot of us who still appreciate you for all the ones you did.

Happy birthday.

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